Tokimeki Memorial Girls’ Side 3 – Niina GET!

Get, but do not want. What do I do with him now, throw him away? Anyone want a free Junpei? Anyone?

His route was really bland. His CGs were bland. His activities were bland. His Christmas CG…wait, I don’t even remember what CG you get for his Christmas, is there even one? Plus since he’s a junior you don’t get to go on the school trip together. The school play with him was hilarious though, I actually laughed out loud at that bit.

All in all he’s a nice enough guy, but he seems really shallow to me. And the sad thing is, you can tell he’s ‘acting’ shallow to try and seem ‘cool’, but that the real Junpei is probably a very interesting and sensitive guy. For example when you ask him about his hobbies, he says “fishing” then he takes it back and he’s like…I forget what he said, but what’s wrong with liking “fishing”? Why can’t he be true to himself? My hope for his route was to steadily peel away the layers and see the “real” Junpei beneath but no dice. He maintains the facade till the end. He has a lot of growing up to do before I’ll ever consider him a serious romantic prospect.

Of course, part of the reason is that I just didn’t like his looks. Especially his weird sleepy-eyed face, those cheap-looking ear studs and that spiky hairdo. His voice grated on me after a while too. It got so bad after a while that whenever I’d run into him at school I’d be like *grooaaan* not you again… “Wanna walk home with me?” “Ugh, oh very well…I guess.” Whereas whenever I ran into Kou (which was often, I dunno why he seems to like me), I’d be like *yaaay, Kou!* “Wanna wa–” “Yes yes yes yes!”

The only plus to Junpei’s route – apart from the school play I mentioned earlier – is his straightforward confession. Most of the other guys come out and tell this loooooong story for like 5 minutes before they finally get to the “I love you” part, but Junpei comes right out and says it. Then he goes into the long story part, but at least he got to the point right away. Massive props for that.

This game really does have a lot of replay value. I’m on my 6th replay now, going through Ruka’s route. What I really want to be doing is dating Kou again (forgive me, Konno-sempai!!) but fair’s fair, I’ll give each of the characters a shot and then we’ll see.

I’ve still got the Oosako-sensei save I made long ago before I decided I didn’t really want to do his route yet. So Ruka -> Oosako -> Taira (secret character).

Messed up my page

I’m so depressed >_< I completely deleted my page through an ill-advised series of plugin updates that I won’t go into now. Anyway, now I’ve lost every single thing I’ve written in the past year, including all the comments and images.

Luckily Google cache has most of the pages saved, so I’m going to copy and paste those few articles it salvaged wholesale. However the order is going to be completely messed up.

The latest post I made, about getting Junpei in TMGS3, is here.

I’m still working on seeing if I can reinstall the backup I made yesterday on cPanel, but since I know, like, zero about that sort of thing I’m not holding out too much hope.

Let this be a lesson to all of us. Don’t mess with what you don’t know.

Finished SaGa 2

Yippee, I finally finished this game! I hate leaving games unfinished, so even though I’ve started several other games in the meantime, it was nagging at the back of my mind that I still hadn’t finished SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny.

The ending? You, your mom and your dad jump out of the window to go have another adventure. Apparently it’s the same ending from the GBC edition. I was hoping for something a little more exciting after all the effort I went through, but whatever. I’m just glad it’s over, honestly. Will it ever get released in English? Hmm, on one hand it IS from Square-Enix. On the other hand, it’s not very user-friendly and the story is decidedly bland and out-of-date. The updated graphics are very blocky and the battle and levelling system will leave a lot of new users scratching their heads. I’m not even sure I’d recommend it to anyone I know. I enjoyed it but I won’t be playing this again. So…yeah.

SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny

Also known as Final Fantasy Legend II in the West, SaGa 2 was remade for the Nintendo DS earlier this year. I never played the original but I’ve played some of the other SaGa games and liked them a lot, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this game. I’ve got a team of two humans, a robot and an esper. The male human (Seamus) and the robot (Kannon) focus on power attacks while the female human (Liruka) and the esper (Mokochan) focus on magical attacks. It’s been working out great so far. I just beat Odin by the skin of my teeth but the random battles in that area are brutal!

The nice thing about SaGa 2, and other Saga games is that stat ups are random, so you can just move on with the story without worrying too much about leveling up. You’ll get stronger when you get stronger, pretty much. Wikipedia claims that “unlike the original, where a character’s stat increases through gaining levels was largely randomized, characters now become stronger in a “less opaque” fashion, with more defined growth tables for each playable character,” but a casual player like me doesn’t want to mess with tables and figures and stuff like that. And of course if you run into an area where you’re having problems, you can always go back to the first town, equip your weakest items and grind a bit. You gain stats the same, whether you’re fighting in the final dungeon or the first dungeon. Money’s a bit tight in the early stages, but at this point I have 350,000g to play around with so I don’t have to suffer to get stronger.

The only thing that’s been bothering me is my defence. It’s terrible! I hear you can train it by using shields, but I’ve got to wonder about that. I haven’t had a single defence level up in my whole game,my only defence comes from the equipment and magi I put on. Will I be okay for the Final boss like this? ‘Cos all the boss battles so far have been reaming my buttocks, first Venus, then Odin, now who’s next? Hmm…to go back and grind a bit or not to go back and grind a bit? I think I’ll go a bit further till I hit the next boss and see what I’ll need to do to take him out. Hopefully I’ll run into a store that has uber-equipment so I can buff up a bit more.

Anyway, that’s how it’s going. I think I’m almost done with this game, and then I’ll be able to concentrate more fully on Dragon Quest 9 and Harvest Moon: Innocent Life (PS2) and the other dozen games I’m playing right now. Go, go Seamus!

Harvest Moon Twin Villages: Marriage candidates 1

As I said in an earlier post, I’m assuming Marvelous is going with 4 marriage candidates each for its main characters. Unless they announce any more, it looks like it’ll be 2 girls each from Bluebell and Konohana, and 2 guys each from Bluebell and Konohana. Of course I could be wrong… Anyway, time to compile the details I have so far on the potential partners from Bluebell.

GUYS

“A quiet guy, doesn’t talk much about himself. Has a great sense for flower design (?) and stuff along those lines. His dream is to someday win a  flower arranging contest (!). Likes cats.” Okay, not to perpetuate stereotypes or anything, but that doesn’t sound very manly to me. Flower arranging!? He’s even called “Camille!”

GIRLS

I’ve also seen the name romanized as Leah, but I think Lia is cuter. “She’s very popular in the village because she’s cheerful, considerate and organized. She likes to make tea and candy. She wants to open a shop in the city one day so that people can enjoy the sweets and tea she makes.” Not bad, not bad. She’s a bit bland, but not bad.

“Blunt, lighthearted, doesn’t discriminate against anyone. She’s usually optimistic, but she does get depressed sometimes. She can also be quick-tempered. She moved to this village as a child, but she still has the accent from her hometown.” Kyoooot! Even her name is cute, and I like her design and outfits. Looks like I’m playing as a boy this time round. Based on the one screenshot they showed of her, it looks like she speaks in a Kansai accent.

Looking good, Marvelous! Keep me posted!